<P> This is normal text. </P> <P> <SMALL> This text will be presented in a smaller font, if possible. </SMALL> </P>An example which uses SMALL to simulate "small caps" font style.
J<SMALL>UKKA</SMALL> K<SMALL>ORPELA</SMALL> has written an HTML primer G<SMALL>ETTING</SMALL> S<SMALL>TARTED WITH</SMALL> HTML.Especially in a document which contains a lot of abbreviations or other expressions in all-caps, one might use SMALL for those abbrevs to make them look better:
<SMALL>HTML</SMALL>, <SMALL>HTTP</SMALL> and <SMALL>WWW</SMALL> are widely used name-like initialisms. By the way, the reference spelling of character names in Unicode uses upper case only; e.g. "A" is officially <SMALL>CAPITAL LATIN LETTER A</SMALL>.
The use of SMALL to simulate "small caps" as in example 2 above is not particularly effective. Some browsers simply ignore SMALL, leading to an all upper case presentation. In popular browsers, SMALL seems to cause presentation which is just marginally (if at all) smaller than normal font. It is better to use logical markup than to stick presentation conventions designed for traditional forms of publication. For example, use CITE for book titles and other citations. (A user who wants to see them in all caps style might consider using style sheets for the purpose.) Unfortunately there is no logical markup for people's names in current HTML standard.
It is unspecified what happens if SMALL elements are nested; it might or might not result in using a font which is smaller than you get with a single SMALL.
The FONT element may provide more alternatives for specifying different font sizes.
Notice that people may set the normal text font in their browser to something which is just big enough for them to read. If you use SMALL, the result might be illegibly small.
See general notes on text markup, which provide additional examples.